man.

The canteen filled with a maddening slowness, in the manner of all
bottles. Presently he recovered his strength and addressed a screaming
oath to it. He leaned over until it seemed as if he intended to try to
push water into it with his hands. His eyes as he gazed down into the
well shone like two pieces of metal, and in their expression was a great
appeal and a great curse. The stupid water derided him.

There was the blaring thunder of a shell. Crimson light shone through
the swift-boiling smoke, and made a pink reflection on part of the wall
of the well. Collins jerked out his arm and canteen with the same motion
that a man would use in withdrawing his head from a furnace.

He scrambled erect and glared and hesitated. On the ground near him lay
the old well bucket, with a length of rusty chain. He lowered it swiftly
into the well. The bucket struck the water and then, turning lazily
over, sank. When, with hand reaching tremblingly over hand, he hauled it
out, it knocked often against the walls of the well and spilled some of
its contents.

In running with a filled bucket, a man can adopt but one kind of gait.
So through this terrible field, over which screamed practical angels of
death, Collins ran in the manner of a farmer chased out of a dairy by a
bull.

His face went staring white with anticipation--anticipation of a blow
that would whirl him around and down. He would fall as he had seen other
men fall, the life knocked out of them so suddenly that their knees were
no more quick to touch the ground than their heads. He saw the long blue